


Another Suitcase In Another Hall

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26173417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: The last time Steve saw her was driving off from Central Park with Ms. Potts in a sleek gunmetal grey Lamborghini with the numberplate MAR1A. Then, she was in jeans and a black-t-shirt with a denim jacket over the top – street casual. Now, she’s in a sleeveless dress in deep green that probably cost more than Steve’s ma made in a year back home, and which makes her look every inch the business heiress she is.
Relationships: Maria Hill & Steve Rogers, Maria Hill & Tony Stark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	Another Suitcase In Another Hall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/gifts).



Two weeks after he rides out of New York City, Steve Rogers rides back into town again.

They’ve cleaned up most of the mess around Stark Tower, and as he glances up at the shining tower of steel and glass, Steve notes that the rebuilding process is well on its way. It’s amazing what money and power and the Stark name can do.

He expects to be met by Ms Hill or Ms Potts; either would be a logical choice, having met him before, having fought alongside him.

Instead, the elevator doors open to the gilt and marble lobby and a lean, dark-haired man in a pin-striped suit who looks up from his phone.

“So you’re the guy my dad talked about so much.”

The mouth behind the beard has a disdainful twist, and the glance that skims Steve from helmet-flattened hair to dusty riding boots is the kind that Steve’s ma would give the slick characters in their neighborhood when they sauntered by.

“Tony Stark, I presume?”

“You presume correctly. Although why you think that I’m going to let you up in the tower looking like _that_ , I can’t imagine...”

Across the lobby, another elevator dings, the doors slide back and a woman steps out, her heels clicking crisply across the floor.

The last time Steve saw her was driving off from Central Park with Ms. Potts in a sleek gunmetal grey Lamborghini with the numberplate MAR1A. Then, she was in jeans and a grey and red top with a jacket over the top – street casual. Now, she’s in a sleeveless dress in deep green that probably cost more than Steve’s ma made in a year back home, and which makes her look every inch the business heiress she is.

“Tony, I told you I’d look after him.” She comes up to them and offers her hand for Steve to shake, her palm and fingers warm but businesslike. “Captain, glad to see you made it back to the city.”

She’s being polite, but so far as Steve can tell, she means it. Which is a relief. After the way they clashed on the helicarrier, he wasn’t particularly relishing round two.

“I just followed the signs, Ms. Hill.”

Stark doesn’t let such small things as other people’s greetings interrupt him. “I told you, it’s no trouble, Maria.”

“Maybe not trouble.” The look she gives him is exasperated. “But definitely mischief.”

“You wound me, kid. _Wound_ me.”

“You’ll survive.” She regards him a little impatiently. “Have you seen Pepper about the development proposals for the Energy Division yet?”

“I’ve told you, we’re not going to prototype the ARC technology.” Stark frowns down at her. “Your suit runs off that technology, if we give it up—”

“Did I say anything about giving it up? All I said was that Pepper wants to speak with you about the Energy Division.”

“Thereby also conveniently getting me out of the way?”

Maria isn’t daunted by Stark’s accusation. “I can have more than one motive at any one time.”

“You usually have at least four in play.” Stark heaves a put-upon sigh as he presses the button for the elevator. “Fine. But JARVIS is watching you, young lady!” The doors slide open, and he turns to Steve, points two fingers from his eyes towards Steve and steps into the elevator. They hear the doors slide shut.

Maria exhales in a way that’s only slightly exaggerated as she presses the button to call another elevator car. “I keep telling myself that someday he’ll treat me like I’m an actual adult.”

“He’s...what? Twelve years older? It’s not exactly surprising he’d treat you like he’s responsible for you.”

“I see you did the reading.”

Steve wasn’t sure if the neutral tone was criticism or surprise. He answered frankly. “It came up with an internet search.”

The first articles he found were more recent, but Steve had delved a little deeper, getting the hang of the internet, and found archived copies of newspapers from some twenty-five years previously.

It had been something of a drama. A nameless nobody – at best the daughter of a distant cousin of Howard’s wife – whom the powerful Stark family wanted to adopt. A girl whose  borderline-alcoholic  father who wouldn’t let her go without a custody battle he had no hope of winning when there was money and power and persuasion in the mix. There’d been scathing indictments from all sides, innumerable photos of a pretty, wary-eyed little girl, and an undisclosed sum of money paid to Robert Hill for the man to relinquish parental rights so the Starks could adopt the girl as their own.

“ _She was always ours, plain and simple_ ,” Howard said in the interview shortly after the official adoption went through – just a month after Hill’s liver gave out thanks to the drinking habits he’d been developing over the seven years since his wife’s death. “ _We just claimed her_.”

More surprising – at least to the public – was that when Howard and Maria Stark died seven years later, Tony took up legal guardianship over his adopted sister rather than giving it over to Obadiah Stane. Upon Maria’s twenty-fifth birthday, he relinquished the civilian business side of of Stark Industries to her, even as he expanded the weapons manufacturing division and started developing technology.

Since then, the two had subsequently lived as harmoniously as two strong-willed siblings were ever going to manage when they were in charge of an entity as large and as intricately complicated as Stark Industries.

And then Tony Stark got captured during a weapons demonstration.

The news portrayed Maria as a mama bear, her frank and furious replies to questions about whether she was going to reunite Stark Industries contrasting vividly with Obadiah Stane’s calm statements about how it was too early, Tony had only just gone missing, they had every reason to believe that a ransom notice would arrive before the end of the week...

Then Stark was found in the desert, and things suddenly became  _very_ interesting.

“He gave you the Iron Man suit to wear.”

“Yes.” A slight smile touches her face, softer than the ones he’s used to seeing from her – either in person or in the gossip news. “I suppose there’s that.”

They step into the elevator – more chrome and mirrors – and she leans against one of the walls, presses a button that has no floor number next to it and says, “Maria and Captain Rogers for the viewing lounge, please.”

The voice comes from a speaker in the ceiling of the elevator. “Should I implement Master Tony’s access codes for Captain Rogers, Miss Maria?”

“Yes, please, JARVIS.”

Steve thinks about asking about ‘Master Tony’s access codes’, then figures that Maria will tell him sooner or later. But he is just a little curious. “When I arrived, Stark said he wouldn’t let me into the tower looking ‘like this’. Like what?”

She looks him up and down, a scrutiny from head to toe, with all the appreciation that women had given him ever since he’d taken the serum, and all of the assurance of a woman with money and power who knew what she wanted and would target it like it was a mission. By the time she worked her gaze up to his face, the elevator doors had opened at the viewing lounge, and Steve’s skin was flushed from crown to balls.

“Well,” she says after a moment. “I can’t speak for Tony, but I imagine that he thought you looked like a guy out of 1940s New York.”

“I _am_ a guy out of 1940s New York.”

She shrugs as she led the way out of the elevator. “Then it’s not a problem, is it?”

“He made it sound like one.”

“Tony makes everything sound like a problem – usually one that only he can fix.” Maria walks down to a sunken seating space and waves a hand at the lounges, indicating Steve should seat himself. “Pepper and I let him believe it for a while, then we pull the rug out from under him.”

“You mean _you_ pull the rug out from under him?”

Maria’s grin is fierce and feral, a surprising zap of something electric inside Steve’s skin. “What are little sisters for otherwise?”


End file.
